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Wednesday, January 02, 2008

EGYPT: UNHAPPY UNIVERSITY WORKERS CONFRONT THEIR BOSS

I bet you don't read this story anywhere but here today.

In Egypt, Ain Shams University employees confronted the University President Ahmad Zaki Badr, the son of the notorious former Interior Minister General Zaki Badr, on the campus of the Faculty of Agriculture in Shoubra. The employees were demanding job security, as they have been either on temporary contracts or without contracts at all for years.

The protesters prevented the University President from leaving campus till the afternoon.

FYI - Ain Shams University (pictured here) was established in 1950. It is the third oldest university in Egypt. The university has more than 180,000 students, 5,000 staff members, 4,000 assistant staff and more than 100 centers and special units.

The following is from Almasry Alyoum (Egypt).

Temporary Workers Scuffle with Head of Ain Shams University

The faculty of agriculture at Ain Shams University was the scene for scuffles and exchange of verbal abuse that erupted between the university head Ahmed Zaki Badr and temporary workers protesting against forcing them to sign new contracts that slash their monthly salaries form LE 300 to 105.

The confrontation began when Badr arranged a meeting with picketing workers at a lecture hall at the faculty in Shobra.

Badr, who is the son of the former interior minister, began the meeting by scolding workers and reminding them of how they went through hardships and bore humiliations to be hired as laborers even though they were university graduates.

In an angry reaction to Badr's words, the workers attacked him and some managed to scuffle with him while shouting angry protests. The scuffle did not come to an end except after the security managed to pull Badr from the angry crowd and shelter him in the safety of their offices.

One of Badr's aides, meanwhile, assaulted a woman who was with the protestors by pushing her to the ground. The woman was transferred to the Nasser Health Institute amid reports she was dead. Health sources told al-Masry al-Youm, however, that she was alive and that she later returned to where the workers were picketing.

In the student hostel, workers continued to picket in protest to the new contract, following suit with their colleagues at the faculty of agriculture. Protesting workers threatened to take their protest to the People's Assembly, where they said they